Learning to Code: New After-School Activity

With the advent of smartphones and handy mobile applications that help you hail a cab or find a gas station, the use of software has become more tightly intertwined with our daily lives. The success stories of some app developers have encouraged students and professionals to learn coding, the language of the future.

Coding class at First Code Academy.

First Code Academy

Michelle Sun, a former Goldman Sachs technology analyst decided to take a three-month programming bootcamp at the Hackbright Academy in Silicon Valley after her first mobile application venture failed due to her lack of technical knowledge. Since then she worked as a programmer at Bump, a local-file-sharing app startup later acquired by Google and taught coding in high schools in the Bay Area.

Inspired by her previous employer Joel Gasoigne–the founder of Silicon Valley-based social media management tool Buffer who made the app as a weekend project to meet his own needs to space out his tweets– the Hong Kong native founded a code learning workshop called First Code Academy in Hong Kong last year to pass on lessons she has learned.

Sun spoke about coding in her daily life and the goals of her Hong Kong-based startup First Code Academy. Below are edited excerpts.

WSJD: How has the knowledge of coding helped you and your friends to live life smarter?

Sun: During a hackathon – a contest which brings together computer programmers for a few days to cook up applications on the fly–held at LinkedIn, my team made an app that allows people to rent cocktail dresses from friends or friends of friends as we noticed that a lot of cocktail dresses were only used once or twice, then left unused in our closets. The app allows users to share their closet.

My friend from Goldman wrote a script to automate his repeated task of monitoring news flow and notifying certain clients while a friend from the public relations industry wrote a customized homepage to aggregate content from the same content sources each morning.

WSJD: What is unique about First Code Academy?

Sun: First Code Academy believes that learning to code is learning to think. Coding is a great tool to help students think better and more logically. Many of our classes involve having students step away from their computer, engage in activities, game play and brainstorming. Through drawing out their logic on the whiteboard, prototyping their app ideas on paper, we encourage divergent, critical thinking.

We aim to challenge the fear of failure so prevalent in Hong Kong’s culture. We encourage students to present their apps in each session, even though it is a rough first version. Our classroom is a safe place for experimentation, creating and sharing. We adopted a slogan I spotted at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. –”Move Fast and Break Things”. We actually encourage students “breaking” their own app because by doing so, they are challenging the pre-designed instructions and learning fast.

WSJD: What do you think of the competition with other coding classes for youth such as UK-based Code Club and New York-based General Assembly?

Sun: The industry is just starting and it requires more parties to raise awareness of the general public. I think programming is like Mandarin a decade ago – no matter which career path a person chooses, it will be an important core skill to excel in any job.

WSJD: How will you grow your coding academy? What are your major challenges?

Sun: We are launching summer programs in a top local school in July, our first partnership with local schools (versus international schools so far). We are also expanding to more international schools in September.

We see the challenges lie in communicating to more parents and teachers that coding is essential for the next generation’s success. Also, students are under crammed schedules after school.

WSJD: What are the qualifications and background of your coding instructors?

Sun: Our instructors come from both local and international–U.S., U.K. and Brazil. They have led technical education workshops for teens before and are passionate about education. All of them have at least 5 years of experience in programming and have worked in startups as software and product engineers.

WSJD: Why did you choose Hong Kong over other locations?

Sun: I was born and raised in Hong Kong and studied here until before university. I understand the education system and the mindset of parents, students and teachers here and see an opportunity to make a difference.

WSJD: What is your ultimate goal with the coding academy?

Sun: We want to bring coding education to all pre-university students.